


The Things We Never Said and The Letters I Never Sent

by Painted_LadyBones



Category: Music RPF, Rock Music RPF, The Rolling Stones
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Letters, One Shot, Platonic Love, long relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29106606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Painted_LadyBones/pseuds/Painted_LadyBones
Summary: Mick writes a letter to Keith that he has no intention of sending, outlining his feelings and fears on eve of the other half of the Glimmer Twins' 77th birthday.
Relationships: Mick Jagger & Charlie Watts (mentioned), Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Mick Jagger & Ronnie Wood (mentioned)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	The Things We Never Said and The Letters I Never Sent

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know you. I’ve said that before, off the cuff, without giving it much thought, but now I’m 77 and I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know you. What was once a cliche seems like a miracle now, I guess. For both of us, but you more than me. You were the one that drank, snorted, and screwed through the better part of two decades, who took shameless pride in your experimentalism and hedonism. And now you’ve been happily wed for forty years, living some perfect cake topper life, and I’m with someone new, in the endless line of ‘someone new’s.

It’s not that I resent it. Hell, I was your best man, and I think I knew, from the moment you brought us all to meet her for the first time, and she burst through the door half clothed to jump into your arms, that she was the one who would make you happy. Happy for good. I haven’t found that woman yet. I find them for a while, and then I grow bored, and besides, there are new things to do. But I’m not sending this, so maybe that’s not quite true. Maybe the truth is that I always fall back on you, and the other two.

Not having you to fall back on, more than your success away from me and my own relative failure, is why I don’t want to talk about forty years ago. Why I hate that damned song, perfect and so suited to your voice as it may be, with all of my being. You don’t sing it anymore, even when we argue. A sad, childish part of me, desperate to cling to the impoverished twenties we shared in a squalid flat, wants to think, to believe, that you don’t sing it because you don’t want to break my heart. You’re probably just sick of it.

Some days, some years, I’m fairly sure you’re sick of me. Of course, I know that you are much more contemplative than what others see. That most of you exists deep within, and it takes years to dig through to that elusive you. That makes it worse, somehow. Makes you airing all of that dirty laundry, making fun of me right to my face, worse. We had gone twenty years without a blow out, and in a second we were back where all of the pain started. You never hesitated to exhume the skeletons in our collective closet, or admit that, while we do now coexist in peace, the beauty of our relationship had faded. The little rituals, and endless conversations, which gave it substance had shriveled. Never did you doubt that you still loved me, you said, but everyone in the world could see that it was the love of a dead marriage.

It’s not a dead marriage for me. Nor a live one, I suppose. I’m caught half way, endlessly wavering between both possibilities. That’s why you don’t trust me anymore, not often. Because I’m a janus faced cad who vacillates between the men I’ve been, the men you’ve adored and despised and who still all live within my skin despite my best efforts, without end. Even you know when to stop touching a hot stove.

The last one who truly seemed like she might be happy for good ended it, ended herself, half a decade ago and you were there in an instant. Nothing for me to handle, just sit back and be comforted, be embraced by that undercurrent of love you never denied, except the once. Nowadays, we still argue, but you apologize for things. And call, punctually, never failing to appear in my ear at 8 on Sundays.

You don’t fool me, though. When we play together, and I fail to ever get closer, to come up to you, to lean in and press my forehead against yours as our living talents entwine, I can feel it weigh upon you from across the stage. The heaviness is there, and you cling that much harder to her when we finish, even as you spin her around and laugh and shout in triumph. My forehead pressed against yours, I can feel the wrinkles that bunch at the corners of your eyes, the way your face opens and transforms with a smile. Nothing in the world feels quite like that. And nothing in the world feels quite like knowing I’ve failed to do it, that not only have I given the press more fodder to claim that our now fairly placid facade is nothing but a put upon face to continue raking in money, I have given you reason to believe that I carry nothing but greed and a drop of nostalgia in me, that the love has shriveled up and blown away.

You’re turning 77 tomorrow. Please don’t make me live to only remember a time when I knew you.

**Author's Note:**

> The song referenced is "You Don't Move Me" from Talk Is Cheap.


End file.
